Category: The Dish

A fashion show from National Geographic.

I guess he does make a good lawyer, if you count pushing the envelope to destroy any semblance of fairness as being a good lawyer. But this should make any sane person fall off their chair:

Go back, in effect, to the status quo ante and make some reasonable and fair adjustments. In Michigan, Clinton received 55 percent of the vote. According to Thegreenpapers.com, she thus should receive 73 pledged delegates based on that percentage. What about the 50 remaining uncommitted delegates, and 7 collectively cast for Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, who were also on the ballot? Some of those 50 delegates might have been for Clinton as a second choice to candidates other than Obama, so it would be totally unfair to award all 50 delegates to Obama…

"Totally unfair". The rationale? I hope you’re sitting down:

One little known fact: Clinton complied with party rules by allowing her name to remain on the ballot, as did Dodd and Kucinich. Obama was not forced by party rules to remove his name — he chose to do so.

And so he should be punished. The upshot of Davis’ chutzpah is that Clinton should get 102 out of 130 delegates in Michigan.

So Michigan isn’t penalized for breaking the rules (can you imagine what that precedent will do for future primary schedules?). Clinton isn’t punished. She is rewarded with a number of delegates she would never have won in a normal primary. Obama is punished. And Clinton gets almost 78 percent of the delegates from Michigan in a state where she was running neck and neck with Obama before the illegitimate primary.

Recall that 538’s demographic assessment of how Obama would have done in Michigan if it had been counted as a regular state (and not broken the rules) is as follows: 65 to 63 for Obama. There is no conceivable way that Clinton would have won Michigan by a margin of 102 – 28, or 78 to 22 percent, a far bigger margin than Clinton win in any other primary or caucus. And yet that’s what the Clintonites are demanding.

This is what they are aiming for: stealing this nomination by the Rules Committe and then corralling the super-delegates to back them. If the supers do not go their way, they have already warned that Florida and Michigan Democrats may not back Obama in the fall.

The thought that these creeps could find their way back into the White House is terrifying.

Reihan makes a strong case:

Whether or not McCain and his allies were right on the merits — it is by no means obvious that they were not — there is no denying that the Virginia Senator has successfully maneuvered the presumptive Republican nominee into the profoundly unpopular position of being against a measure designed to honor the service and the sacrifice of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Can Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius say the same thing? Or Ohio Governor Ted Strickland? Former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn has been praised for his national security expertise. But did he resign from the Reagan-era Pentagon, as Webb did, after resisting orders to downsize the Navy?

The question is no longer whether Barack Obama should select Jim Webb as his nominee. It is whether he can justify not doing so.

Reihan and Conor counter Ron Rosenbaum.

 

Drawn with GPS: a drawing by DHL package:

The Clintons keep on coming: fighting imaginary conspiracies, insisting that the delegate count means nothing, that the nomination fight starts now, and on and on. The strategy is clear: when they lose the nomination, they are laying the ground for blaming Obama if he loses in the fall and gearing for another Clinton run in 2012. The logic they are using – who cares about delegate leads? all that matters is the popular vote and Hillary is ahead in the polls against McCain – suggests they will take this to the convention. If they do that, of course, they will help Obama lose the election in November. I think that’s now the logic – although, like many sociopaths, they change their mood, argument and demeanor from day to day.

Maybe, with Bob Barr’s candidacy for the Libertarians, it could hand Obama Georgia:

Since Bill Clinton narrowly carried Georgia in 1992, the state has gone Republican, but by inconsistent margins.

This election could be the perfect storm for Democrats to turn Georgia blue: Obama likely would inspire high turnout among African-Americans (who represent 30 percent of Georgia’s population); McCain might suffer low turnout among religious conservatives long skeptical of him; and the just-announced Libertarian candidacy of Bob Barr, a recent Republican member of Congress from northern Georgia, could siphon conservative votes from McCain.

With this confluence of forces working for the Democrats, Nunn joining the ticket could take Obama over the top in the ninth-largest state.

Americans are driving less. Here’s hoping gas prices begin to have a deeper and deeper effect on carbon use.
 

A reader worries:

The timing of the May 31st DNC meeting to consider the status of the Michigan and Florida delegations seems to be particularly bad.  Obama is less than 50 delegates away from crossing the nomination goal line. From the Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana primaries he will likely get 80% of what he needs, and then less than 10 super-delegates are likely to push him over – on June 3rd.

With success for Obama likely on June 3rd, what could the May 31st DNC meeting do?  As far as I can tell, nothing useful.  If they seat the delegations, then the goal line has been moved when Obama is 98% there. If they do not seat the delegations, then this gives Clinton an excuse to "fight to the Convention" in August. I think the only rational thing the DNC should do on May 31st is to agree to postpone the meeting for a few weeks.  Obama could then claim the nomination, Clinton could be pressured to concede, and then a rational agreement on seating FL and MI could take place.

Larison doesn’t think either Webb or Warner are good options:

…it shocks me when I read about people seriously contemplating Mark Warner as Obama’s running mate.  In the case of Webb, assuming the Democrats win the presidential race, you would be depriving the Senate Democrats of one of their most promising new members and opening up a narrowly won Senate seat to a fresh contest after Gov. Kaine appoints a placeholder for the bulk of Webb’s term.  In the case of Warner, this abandons a sure-thing Democratic victory in the election to replace John Warner and throws some poor last-minute replacement into the middle of a campaign he will have a much harder time winning.  Unless Obama’s election hinges on Virginia alone, and it’s not clear that this is the state he needs to worry about the most, Mark Warner would do a new Obama administration a lot more good in the Senate as an additional Democratic vote in support of his agenda than he would as a VP nominee who might not even be needed in order to carry Virginia.